[Drlee]

But please, if a few well-meaning men dare to venture a constructive viewpoint that isn’t 100 percent in line with the current groupthink, must they also be autoshamed? Thoughtful people don’t deserve to be destroyed in the name of going after the guys who really deserve it.

This is exactly why we don't solve the race problems in America. Why? Because for white people, and most particularly rich white people, the risk of making a mistake in the dialog outweighs any real benefit they might get from it. And this danger is quite real. It is not a perceptual problem. There is a real danger that they might misspeak and be ruined for it. Look at this story. Classic example.

But in the cast of #metoo, it appears that many of the women do not realize that covert political infighting is a game we men have been playing for millennia. There will be consequences for their actions. They may never really know what happened specifically but this shotgun approach, calling out as equal offenders Weinstein and Franken will not go unpunished.

[noemon]

Catherine Deneuve says men should be 'free to hit on' women
French actor signs open letter that claims ‘witch-hunt’ in wake of Harvey Weinstein scandal poses threat to sexual freedom

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The revered French actor Catherine Deneuve has hit out at a new “puritanism” sparked by sexual harassment scandals, declaring that men should be “free to hit on” women.

Deneuve was one of about 100 female French writers, performers and academics who wrote an open letter deploring the wave of “denunciations” that has followed claims that the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein raped and sexually assaulted women over decades.

They claimed the “witch-hunt” that followed threatens sexual freedom.

“Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not – nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack,” said the letter published in the newspaper Le Monde.

“Men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone’s knee or try to steal a kiss,” said the letter, which was also signed by Catherine Millet, author of the explicit 2002 bestseller The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

Men had been dragged through the mud, they argued, for “talking about intimate subjects during professional dinners or for sending sexually charged messages to women who did not return their attentions”.

The letter attacked feminist social media campaigns like #MeToo and its French equivalent, #BalanceTonPorc (Call out your pig), for unleashing this “puritanical ... wave of purification”.

It claimed that “legitimate protest against the sexual violence that women are subject to, particularly in their professional lives,” had turned into a witch-hunt.

“What began as freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite – we intimidate people into speaking ‘correctly’, shout down those who don’t fall into line, and those women who refused to bend [to the new realities] are regarded as complicit and traitors.”

The signatories – who included a porn star-turned-agony aunt – claimed they were defending sexual freedom, for which “the liberty to seduce and importune was essential”.

The Oscar-nominated Deneuve, 74, is best known internationally for playing a bored housewife who spends her afternoons as a prostitute in Luis Buñuel’s classic 1967 film Belle de Jour.

Deneuve has made no secret of her annoyance at social media campaigns to shame men accused of harassing women.

“I don’t think it is the right method to change things, it is excessive,” she said last year, referring to the #MeToo hashtag. “After ‘calling out your pig’ what are we going to have, ‘call our your whore’?”

“Instead of helping women this frenzy to send these (male chauvinist) ‘pigs’ to the abattoir actually helps the enemies of sexual liberty – religious extremists and the worst sort of reactionaries,” the collective of women who signed the letter said.

“As women we do not recognise ourselves in this feminism, which beyond denouncing the abuse of power takes on a hatred of men and of sexuality.”

They insisted that women were “sufficiently aware that the sexual urge is by its nature wild and aggressive. But we are also clear-eyed enough not to confuse an awkward attempt to pick someone up with a sexual attack.”

After the backlash she faced she clarified:

Veteran French actress Catherine Deneuve was among 100 women who signed an open letter last week, slamming what they termed “expeditious justice” spurred by the #MeToo movement and defending a man’s “freedom to importune.” The letter published in Le Monde has been the source of much debate in the past several days. Denueve herself is now responding.

In her own open letter published by Libération Sunday night local time, the actress stands by signing the manifesto while also explaining her position and apologizing to “all victims of odious acts who may have felt offended” by the letter whose text she says does not claim that harassment is a good thing.

Saying she felt a need to clarify her position, Deneuve writes, “Yes, I like freedom. I don’t like this characteristic of our times whereby everyone feels they have the right to judge, to arbitrate, to condemn. A time where simple denunciations on social media generate punishment, resignation and sometimes, and often, lynching by the media… I don’t excuse anything. I don’t decide the guilt of these men because I am not qualified to do so. And few are… No, I don’t like this pack mentality.”


Saying she found the manifesto “vigorous” if not “perfectly right,” she declares, “Yes, I signed this petition, and yet it seems to me absolutely necessary today to underline my disagreement with the manner in which some of the signatories claim the right to permeate the media, distorting the spirit of the original text.” She goes on to cite, without naming her, a woman who appeared on television saying it is possible to have an orgasm during a rape. Such a declaration “is worse than spitting in the face of all those who have suffered this crime,” Deneuve writes.

She adds, “Obviously nothing in the text claims that harassment is good, otherwise I would not have signed it.”

The Oscar-nominated star of Indochine points out she has been an actress since age 17 and could say she has “witnessed situations that were more than indelicate, or that I know through other actors that filmmakers have abused their power in a cowardly manner.” But, “it is not for me to speak in the place of my sisters.”

An essential reason Deneuve says she signed the text is “the danger of the purging of the arts. Are we going to burn Sade from La Pléiade? Designate Leonardo da Vinci as a pedophile artist and erase his paintings? Take Gaugin off museum walls? Destroy the drawings of Egon Schiele? Ban Phil Spector’s records? This climate of censorship leaves me speechless and worried about the future of our societies.”

Deneuve concludes, “I have sometimes been reproached for not being a feminist,” and reminds that she was one of 343 women who signed the 1971 manifesto defending abortion rights that was written by Simone de Beauvoir. “Abortion was punishable by criminal prosecution and imprisonment at the time. That is why I want to say to conservatives, racists and traditionalists of all kinds who have found it strategic to support me, I am not fooled. They will have neither my gratitude nor my friendship, quite the contrary. I am a free woman and I will continue to be. I warmly salute all the victims of odious acts who may have felt offended by the letter published in Le Monde, it’s to them and them alone that I apologize.”

[noemon]

After the #MeToo backlash, an insider’s guide to French feminism
Catherine Deneuve joined 99 other prominent French women in a letter last week accusing the Hollywood anti-abuse campaign of censorship and intolerance. Agnès Poirier explains how the debate is viewed in Paris

French women made headlines all over the world last week. And not because they never get fat or their children never throw food, as a series of American bestsellers put it, but because 100 of them signed an open letter published in Le Monde offering an alternative view of the #MeToo campaign and drawing attention to what they regard as rampant censorship in feminist ranks. In signing the letter, the French film star Catherine Deneuve set the feminist world ablaze.

They spoke their mind in a Gallic manner: straightforwardly, to the point of appearing blunt. The letter was also strikingly badly edited, with clumsy chunks unworthy of their authors. But, in short, they think the campaign by the #MeToo movement to tackle sexual harassment represents a “puritanical … wave of purification”; that “rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cackhandedly, is not, nor is being gentlemanly a macho attack”.

They went on to proclaim that “what began as freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite – we intimidate people into speaking ‘correctly’, shout down those who don’t fall into line, and those women who refused to bend [to the new realities] are regarded as complicit and traitors”.

In other words, these 100 French women, representing many more in France, argue that this new puritanism reeks of Stalinism and its “thought police”, not of true democracy. What they refuse to countenance is an image of women “as poor little things, this Victorian idea that women are mere children who have to be protected”, the same one extolled by religious fundamentalists and reactionaries.

“As women, we do not recognise ourselves in this feminism, which beyond denouncing the abuse of power takes on a hatred of men and of sexuality.”

This is an example of what has always distinguished French feminism from the American and British versions: the attitude towards sex and towards men.

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Abnousse Shalman, A French-Iranian writer says she does not dismiss the courage of #MeToo campaigners, but wants to ‘add a different voice’. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Partly lost in translation, the letter was vilified on social networks, its authors accused by some of being “lobotomised” by their “internalised misogyny” (according to Asia Argento), and more generally for being “rape apologists”, “too old and decrepit to understand women’s issues today”, for being “over-privileged”, for being “stuck in the 1960s and 1970s”.

Deneuve and Catherine Millet, the art critic famous for The Sexual Life of Catherine M, suddenly became the faces of what was seen by many younger feminists in France and abroad as a retrograde bunch of over-privileged celebrities and intellectuals both totally unconcerned by the plight of all those anonymous victims of rape and sexual harassment and too preoccupied by their sexual freedom and defending the French way of gallivanting about.

The letter’s authors did not do themselves any favours by writing of men’s “right to pester” women. This clumsy and unacceptable line poured more oil on the fire and reinforced prejudices and cliches about French women. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1947: “American women have only contempt for French women always too happy to please their men and too accepting of their whims.”

This is a real shame: the letter puts forward strong arguments. And it does so by being overtly French; in other words, by sounding authoritative – and rude. Heated debate is a passion, considered healthy in France. As the highly regarded 89-year-old French historian and feminist Michelle Perrot, partly critical of the Deneuve letter, wrote: “They are triumphant free women who show a certain lack of solidarity with the #MeToo victims … But they say what they think, and many people share their point of view. The debate is real and must be recognised.”

In France today, different feminist groups coexist: the main one is a feminism following the steps of De Beauvoir, one that is not at war with men but rather with machismo culture, gender inequality and the inherent misogyny of religions.

And there is a rather recent American import of feminism, one that often comes across as opportunistic and “man-hating”, one that turns a blind eye to religious misogyny, for instance defending the wearing of the hijab. They present themselves as the new vanguard of French feminism, the new blood, except they can sound to some like Stalinist commissars, or Robespierre in culottes, passing edicts about what is acceptable conduct. We would be wrong, however, to think that the current debate shows a generational fight. Many millennials have signed the Deneuve letter. The divide is political, ideological even.

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Michele Perrot, professor emeritus of contemporary history at the Paris Diderot University, aged 89. She fears a ‘new moral order’. Photograph: Ulf Andersen

According to Perrot, “the authors of the letter fear that the #MeToo movement dents creative, artistic and sexual freedom, that a moralist backlash comes and destroys what libertarian thinking has fought hard to obtain, that women’s bodies and sex become again this forbidden territory and that a new moral order introduces a new censorship against the free movement of desire”, and concludes: “There is indeed reason to share their fear.”

This is probably the most interesting and sharpest argument made in the Deneuve letter. As Sarah Chiche, a 41- year-old psychoanalyst and author who signed the Deneuve letter, explained: “The #MeToo victims’ personal stories have proved a powerful magnet and very popular with the public. It has almost become a new norm in public discourse. Unfortunately, this is becoming insidious: now books need to be rewritten, films reshot.”

Last week an opera director in Florence decided to change the end of Bizet’s Carmen so that Carmen now kills her murderer. Ridley Scott edited out Kevin Spacey from his latest film and reshot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World. Art critics questioned on the BBC whether to boycott the Gauguin exhibition in London because the painter slept with under-age Tahitians. Others want to rewrite Sleeping Beauty so that the final kiss is a consented one.

Since Deneuve signed the letter, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour has suddenly been described as a rape apologist film, to be banned from cinemas. “This new feminism is now serving the interests of cultural revisionism and doesn’t know when or where to stop,” says Chiche.

It is a French tradition to disturb, to question, to critique, to set ablaze the conflict between two freedoms, that which protects and that which disturbs. Sexuality has become the new battlefield. “Today, in 2018, Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses and Nabokov’s Lolita would never see daylight because of both reactionaries and self-proclaimed progressives who invoke the fate of real victims to shut us all up,” says Chiche.

For all the talk about Deneuve, little has been said of the initiator of this public letter. Her name is Abnousse Shalmani. She is a 41-year-old French-Iranian, born in Tehran. She grew up under Ayatollah Khomeini until her parents fled to Paris in 1985. In a book she published in 2014, Khomeini, Sade et Moi, she revealed that she was the victim of a rape, but also said French authors such as Colette, Victor Hugo and Marquis de Sade taught her how to be free, as a woman and a sexual being, far from the Islamic veil she was forced to wear as a girl in Tehran.

Perhaps we should listen to her when, amid the furore, she tried to make herself heard on French radio: “We do not dismiss the many women who had the courage to speak up against [Harvey] Weinstein. We do not dismiss either the legitimacy of their fight. We do, however, add our voice, a different voice, to the debate.”

One should always listen to the French difference.

Agnès Poirier is a London-based French writer and political commentator. Her forthcoming book Left Bank, Arts, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-1950 (Bloomsbury) is to be published in March

[BeheadTheFrog]

The only hysteria I see is the hysteria displayed by easily ‘offended’ men who dont know how to talk to women without sexually harassing them.

[Drlee]

The only hysteria I see is the hysteria displayed by easily ‘offended’ men who dont know how to talk to women without sexually harassing them.

Nonsense. But how politically correct of you.

[AFAIK]

She goes on to cite, without naming her, a woman who appeared on television saying it is possible to have an orgasm during a rape. Such a declaration “is worse than spitting in the face of all those who have suffered this crime,” Deneuve writes.

Does Deneuve also believe it's impossible to be impregnated during a rape? It's interesting that women can deny biology and be labeled feminist whilst men who deny biology are labeled misogynists.

[Drlee]

As this mass hysteria grows, Mark Wahlberg has donated his 1.5 million dollar re-shoot fee from the movie he made to this defense fund because.....blackmail. It can't be called anything else.

"Over the last few days my reshoot fee for 'All the Money in the World' has become an important topic of conversation," Wahlberg said in a statement. "I 100% support the fight for fair pay and I'm donating the $1.5M to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams' name."
William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, the talent agency that represents both Wahlberg and Williams, also announced it would be making a $500,000 donation to the fund, again in Williams' name. The organization had already donated $1 million to the fund earlier this month.

I see. Let me see if I have this right. Male and female stars, no matter how relatively popular they are, should be paid the same obscene amounts of money. Is it lost on everyone that the 2.5 million bucks we are talking about here alone is a stunning amount of money for any legal fund to have? Will this seemingly unlimited amount of money cause cases to be considered that have little reason to be?

Every man in America and indeed the world should be concerned about the ramifications of this stuff. It may well have a negative impact on the employment of women in general. That would be sad but it may well happen.

[colliric]

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.hol ... ts-1074565

Sounds like Wahlburg was knocking the studio up for extra cash with robust contract negotiations while his costar Williams just accepted the reshoots with little negotiation just to finish the film..

A weird situation.

[Pants-of-dog]

It is indeed quite amusing seeing the insults thrown such as accusing everyone of hysteria while simultaneously making unfounded accusations about imposing gender quotas and getting rid of due process, among other things.

[Drlee]

There has been no due process in a single one of the firings with the possible exception of Weinstein. These men have been fired out of hand on accusation alone.

Further.

There appears to be no room for rehabilitation or redemption. Franken's case is a good one to consider. What he did was nothing short of trivial. And all done while he was a comedian paid to do outrageous things. The picture now causing so much outrage, would at the time, been considered funny by many, if not most, men and women.

I am not calling for sexual harassment in the marketplace. I have spoken out against it for years. I am calling for a modicum of caution lest we throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Pants-of-dog]

There has been no due process in a single one of the firings with the possible exception of Weinstein. These men have been fired out of hand on accusation alone.

Due process is a legal term, and has nothing to do with people being fired.

[Drlee]

Due process is a legal term, and has nothing to do with people being fired.

And that is not only wrong, it is a cop out. Want to use terms like "fair", "just", "reasonable", or "equitable" instead? Fine with me.

I will point out though that some states have illegal reasons for firing people. It remains to be seen whether any of these will apply.

[Pants-of-dog]

Please exaplin how I am wrong. Thanks.

[Suntzu]

Please exaplin how I am wrong. Thanks.

Yeah, what's wrong with firing someone over unsubstantiated allegations?

[Drlee]

As I allowed in my post:

I will point out though that some states have illegal reasons for firing people. It remains to be seen whether any of these will apply.

Wrongful firing is actionable in some states and illegal in some.

[Pants-of-dog]

Are you arguing that people are being fired over allegatuons of sexual harassment or sexual assault and then having their claims of being illegally fired thrown out of court despite due process?

[Drlee]

Are you arguing that people are being fired over allegatuons of sexual harassment or sexual assault and then having their claims of being illegally fired thrown out of court despite due process?

I know of no such claims. There may never be any court cases. I was simply articulating that there are laws that should protect someone from being fired in some circumstances. Many of these celebrities have contracts. We will see what kind of settlements they reach. My suspicion is that many of the firings are simply strategic rather than based upon some moral outrage. So a check will be written and the "offender" go away quietly. All the richer for the experience.

[skinster]

Re: video of Aziz Ansari

and

The only hysteria I see is the hysteria displayed by easily ‘offended’ men who dont know how to talk to women without sexually harassing them.

Right. Men are getting their privileges called out and it's obviously a threat for those who were used to acting like women are here for their pleasure alone, as we can see in this thread. They can't consider why we women say men are a threat to us like, ever so regularly, even after we post statistics of women being raped every few minutes and thousands being killed every year by men.

That and the posting of "feminists" who support misogyny...is just...

[noemon]

Canadian author Margaret Atwood is facing a social media backlash after voicing concerns about the #MeToo movement and calling for due process in the case of a former university professor accused of sexual misconduct.

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Writing in the Globe and Mail, Atwood said the #MeToo movement, which emerged in the wake of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, was the symptom of a broken legal system and had been “seen as a massive wake up call”.

However, she wondered where North American society would go from here. “If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers?” Atwood asked.

She raised the possibility that the answer could leave women divided. “In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn’t puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated.”

The 78-year-old author of The Handmaid’s Tale drew a parallel between these concerns and those who accused her of being a “bad feminist” after she signed an open letter last year calling for due process for a University of British Columbia professor facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

The university’s administration released few details on the case against Steven Galloway, the former chair of the creative writing program, saying only that he was facing “serious allegations”. After a months-long investigation he was fired, but the official findings were never released. The faculty association said in a statement that all but one of the allegations, including the most serious allegation, were not substantiated.

In her piece, Atwood pointed to the university’s lack of transparency around the allegations and noted that Galloway had been asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.

“The public – including me – was left with the impression that this man was a violent serial rapist, and everyone was free to attack him publicly, since under the agreement he had signed, he couldn’t say anything to defend himself,” she wrote. “A fair-minded person would now withhold judgment as to guilt until the report and the evidence are available for us to see.”

She likened the affair to the Salem witch trials, in that guilt was assumed of those who were accused. This idea of guilt by accusation had at times been used to usher in a better world or justify new forms of oppression, she wrote. “But understandable and temporary vigilante justice can morph into a culturally solidified lynch-mob habit, in which the available mode of justice is thrown out the window, and extralegal power structures are put into place and maintained.”

Many online took issue with her view. “If @MargaretAtwood would like to stop warring amongst women, she should stop declaring war against younger, less powerful women and start listening,” wrote one person on Twitter. “In today’s dystopian news: One of the most important feminist voices of our time shits on less powerful women to uphold the power of her powerful male friend,” wrote another.

Some accused Atwood of using her position of power to silence those who had come forward with allegations against Galloway. “‘Unsubstantiated’ does not mean innocent. It means there was not enough evidence to convict,” read one tweet.

Others defended Atwood. “Genuinely upsetting to see Margaret Atwood attacked for pointing out that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is the key to a civilised society. That has to still be a thing, yes? How can that suddenly be a bad thing?”

In a statement to the Guardian, Atwood pointed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, echoing an earlier tweet in which she defended her view by noting that endorsing basic human rights for everyone was not equivalent to warring against women.

Her opinion piece, she said, was meant to highlight the choice we now face; fix the system, bypass it or “burn the system down and replace it with, presumably, another system”.

[skinster]

Atwood is more a liberal than a feminist and demonstrated that version of feminism when she crossed the Palestinian picket line. For that and her concern-trolling on behalf of men, she can be ignored.

This quote by her though, still rings true:

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."